Claude V. Palisca

Who was Claude V. Palisca?

Claude Victor Palisca was an internationally recognized authority on early music, especially opera of the renaissance and baroque periods, and was Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale University. His 1968 book Baroque Music in the Prentice-Hall history of music series ran to three editions.

Palisca was born in Fiume, in 1921. He studied at Queens College, New York, and Harvard, where he achieved a Doctorate in 1954. From 1953-1959 he taught at the University of Illinois, whence he moved to Yale University. From 1969-1975 he chaired the Faculty of Music at Yale. He lectured throughout the US and Europe and held visiting appointments at the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Zagreb and the University of Barcelona. On retirement he was appointed Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale.

From 1970-1972 he was president of the American Musicological Society. In addition to directing the Yale music curriculum he consulted for the U.S. Office of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities.